


In Motion

by thatonegreenpencil



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: And in denial, Bonding, Fluff, Gen, Klance if you squint, Swearing, dorks being dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 06:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7348465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonegreenpencil/pseuds/thatonegreenpencil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late night training session somehow turns into more of a bonding exercise. Or the beginning of one, anyway. </p><p>(Set after ep 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Motion

**Author's Note:**

> This began with, "hey, what if Lance is a huge nerd and makes star wars references" and somehow turned into klance that I speed wrote in two hours. The result of Voltron hell, everyone.
> 
> First time writing these characters, so characterization critiques are welcomed! Hope you enjoy!

He can’t forget the way he’d been completely helpless under the mercy of the laser turrets.

It was a team-building exercise, yeah, but Lance’s lack of fighting skills had been too glaringly apparent, even among the group. The way he’d practically floundered about was plain _embarrassing_ ; for all his big talk, the best he was able to do was jump around like a monkey on fire. The pride he usually takes in his abilities is starting to waver under Coran and Princess Allura’s disapproving words.

Yeah, in the end they’d been able to form Voltron—whoop-de-do. Power of friendship and trust and all that fairytale crap. But Lance knows that he—none of them—will not always be behind a giant metal lion with a team member to watch his back. That’s why, at unholy-o’-clock, he decides it’s time to train.

It takes Lance a couple more minutes to roll himself out of the bed. He does it, though, and he’s even semi-awake by the time he’s halfway dragged himself down the corridor. What’s even better is that he’s _fully_ awake by the time he lumbers back to his room, realizing he’s forgotten to put his gear on. Starting to get a little impatient, he pulls on his armor with speed and pops his helmet on, making sure every last bed-raggled strand is tucked away. For good measure, he twists towards the mirror on the opposite side of the wall and flashes a grin.

“Lookin’ sharp,” he says to the droopy-eyed figure staring back, then rapidly shakes his head back and forth like a wet dog so that the droopy-eyed figure’s eyes spring fully open. “Lookin’ sharp,” he repeats, then gives a satisfied nod before heading out of his room once more.

Now that all his senses are actually functioning, Lance can’t help but notice how _eerie_ the castle really is without the hustle and bustle of the other six members of the crew. (Seven, if you count the weird pyramid thing that follows Pidge around and tends to chirp sometimes and somehow slotted itself into their motley little gang.) The cold lights of alien technology are reminiscent of the blinding glow you’d find in hospital horror movies. Lance is no coward, far from it, but despite the echo of his footsteps the loneliness feels claustrophobic. The tightened grip on his Bayard only loosens when the doors to the training doors slide open.

Then his grip tightens again. Although, for an entirely different reason.

“ _You!_ ” Lance shouts above the sounds of a blade slicing the air which immediately disappear when the other figure in the room jumps at the sudden noise. Lance hopes to heavens above that the other man will drop his blade like an idiot so that, hopefully, he’ll storm out of the room in embarrassment.

No such luck. Keith merely whips around with his usual cool grace, and his stormy blue eyes narrow when the two of them lock gazes. “ _What_ ,” says Keith.

“What are you _doing_?”

“What are _you_ doing?” Despite the late (early) hour, Keith’s eyes are clear and alert and _blazing_ with the intensity of battle that Lance almost wants to take a step back.

But, as stated before, Lance isn’t a coward. He takes a step forward instead, keeps taking steps forward until he’s almost right in the other man’s face. “I’m here to train.”

“Yeah?” Keith spits. “Well, so am I.”

Lance glances over at the training dummy holograms behind Keith, notes how many of them carry deep, equally holographic gashes. “How long?”

“Three hours.” Keith’s eyes further narrow. There’s a challenging gleam in them that pisses Lance off, like _oh look at me I’m spending the whole night training you loser_. There is a very good possibility that this is just Keith’s stupid, default face, but can’t the guy try at least a _little_ bit if that’s the case?

Lance crosses his arms, raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that the best method of training you could think of was practicing slashing completely still, dumb, lifeless practice dummies. I guess they _are_ the perfect practice partners for you.”

If Keith’s gloves weren’t on, Lance could probably see Keith’s knuckles whitening around the hilt of his sword. Keith works his mouth angrily as if to give a biting retort but in the end, he merely sighs. “It’s been a long day.” His voice is significantly dulled, almost monotone. Something like guilt clenches Lance’s chest.

“A long day,” Lance echoes back. They both fall silent and many moments pass with them each in their own heads but at the same time, sharing each others’ weariness. Or at the very least, empathizing with it.

Suddenly, Keith jerks forward, shouldering Lance out of the way. “I’m going to bed,” he says without looking back. “Hope you don’t kill yourself.”

 _How fucking rude_ , Lance huffs to himself. Despite this, there’s a sharp tug at his chest that causes him to blurt out, “Wait a sec!” and stops Keith dead in his tracks.

Lance is glad that the helmet covers his ears, because he’s pretty sure they’re bright red. Keith turns to look at him like someone looking at a slow-motion explosion would—with shock and disbelief.

“You’re just going to leave me hanging?” Lance says with as much indignence he can muster. “I’m not going to sink down to your level and practice on dead piles of code, I need a _moving_ target. And I don’t know how the heck to activate those turrets from before.”

Keith wrinkles his nose. “And you want _me_ to be that target? Even though there’s a definite chance of you screwing up and blasting me out of commission?”

“What,” Lance fires back, “worried you won’t be fast enough for my shots? Agile enough? _Good_ enough?” There’s a beat where Keith’s expression totters between anger and bewilderment before Lance says, “Or you could do that thing in _Star Wars_. Deflect all the shots with the blade of your sword like a space ninja.”

Keith’s face settles on being cross, but with a dash of a smile floating around between the hard lines and set jaw. “That movie is a billion years old and outdated,” he says, rolling his eyes. “And my sword is not a lightsaber. But I’ll do it, only to prove that your aim sucks and you couldn’t hit a rock if your life depended on it.”

“I could hit a _rock_!” Lance shouts but Keith merely pushes past him and back to the main training platform. Lance is quick on his heels, summoning (summoning? Is that the right word? It just seems to _materialize_ out of thin air so summoning would be the closest equivalent. Whatever it is, it’s pretty damn awesome) his blaster from his Bayard. The blaster weighs nicely in his hands. “I can hit a rock,” Lance tells it, and is thrilled when it seems to hum in agreement.

He’s not actually _sure_ how much damage a single shot from this baby can do. Keith seems to be thinking the same thing because, despite the confidence he’d been displaying, he keeps eyeing the bulk of metal in Lance’s hands once they’re opposite each other on the platform. “You sure it’ll be safe?” he asks.

Lance shrugs. “A good time to find out, right?” At the fleeting panic flashing across Keith’s face Lance laughs, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Just trust me, will you? Teammates have to trust each other, have each others’ backs and all that crap, right?”

“I’m surprised you were listening to that, considering how terrible you were doing with everything,” Keith scoffs, though the tension in his shoulders are definitely gone when he crouches, readying his muscles for a quick dodge out of the way. “Ready?”

“Born ready,” Lance replies, hefting the gun. With a grin and a strange fire pumping through his veins, he takes aim.

—————

In the heat of it all—guns blazing; watching Keith dodging flashes of light with fluid, admittedly impressive movements; sometimes grazing a few of the bullets, too close for Lance’s comfort but the wild grin on Keith’s face urging Lance to give it his all—the whole thing turns out to be pretty fun. And improvements are made: his aim is getting more accurate (though he hadn’t hit Keith once; he’d been going for the guy’s heels the whole time) and Keith admits the exercise might’ve helped his reflexes _a little_ bit. They’re both hot and sweaty and flushed with adrenaline (Keith takes off his helmet Lance’s eyes flick to the strands of hair clinging to the frame of Keith’s face and wonders if _he_ looks that cool) and they both flop to the ground with sore muscles and easy grins. Even a fist bump when Lance holds out his fist with wiggling eyebrows.

He’s actually surprised when Keith touches his fist to his. After some hesitation, sure, and with an expression that screams ‘you’re a fucking ten year old’, but Lance is damn sure Keith abandoning his high-and-mighty self—even if it’s just for a second—counts as _progress_.

In that very moment, his one-of-a-kind instincts kick in and once again, cause him to blurt out something stupid. “Can this be a thing?”

He can tell Keith’s judgment of him turns from ‘ten year old’ to ‘prepubescent teenager’, which is even worse. “A… thing.”

“Yeah, this _helped_ , didn’t it?” says Lance, trying to meet Keith’s piercing stare but utterly failing to do so. “Listen, it’s a compromise. We stop hating each other for a bit every night—well, at least _I’ll_ stop hating you, if you want to scowl at me the whole time go right on ahead, I have nerves of _steel_ —and we can take turns dodging each other’s blows and… get better at fighting. Which I’m _great_ at, but, you know, room for improvement.” He looks up. “What do you say?”

There’s a long period of silence where Lance is certain he’s messed up and _I’ll never be able to look Keith in the eye again because I’m an embarrassing idiot saying stupid things_ but the self-deprecation train abruptly comes to a halt when Keith opens his mouth and goes, “I don’t _hate_ you. For what it’s worth.”

Lance blinks. “Um… Okay?” His cheeks betray him, he can feel them glowing with soft heat. “Maybe hate was a bit harsh. _Strongly adverse to one another_.”

“I’m not that either. You’re just stupid and full of yourself and need someone to bring you down a peg.” Lance is about to open his mouth because his pride is _a little bit_ wounded, thank you, but then Keith lets out a deep sigh, running his fingers through sweat-drenched bangs. “But it’s whatever. I guess if you know you have things to work on there’s a spark of hope. Let’s make this… a thing.”

By the quirk of Keith’s lips, Lance decides that Keith is making fun of him. He also decides that he doesn’t care, especially not when a lump of something warm and heavy seems to be lodged in his throat. “Great! Tomorrow night, then.”

“Every night, though? Isn’t that a bit… excessive?”

“What,” Lance says, a devilish grin playing on his face, “can’t keep up?”

Keith pushes him—a gentle, playful, _friendly_ push—and sets his mouth into a straight line with obvious difficulty. “You wish. You couldn’t land a single hit on me.”

“I was doing that on _purpose_. You were the one worrying about getting injured.”

“Well, I was right to trust you then, wasn’t I?”

It seems Lance isn’t the only one blurting out stupid things tonight. Once Keith’s words catch up to him, the red pilot quickly turns, hurriedly striding away. “Don’t think I’ll go as easy on you,” Keith calls over his shoulder, right before the door slides open. Lance watches him turn the corner and disappear from sight.

Lance decides he could get used to this.


End file.
